Founding Engineer

About the role

This is a rare, high-impact founding engineer position at an early-stage consumer AI startup building a real-time, AI-enabled platform to digitize human connection. You'll work directly alongside the founder - a Thiel Fellow - as one of the first engineers, shaping both the product and the engineering culture from the ground up. This is a fully on-site role in San Francisco . You'll take on broad technical ownership across a bold consumer product focused on scalable, meaningful human interactions - integrating cutting-edge real-time video, audio, and memory systems.

Responsibilities

• Work across all aspects of the application alongside the founder, designers, and other engineers.
• Build new systems for memory, retrieval, proactivity, and AI responsiveness.
• Integrate the latest internal and external real-time video generation and audio synthesis models.
• Set the bar for engineering quality and help recruit world-class talent to the team.
• Dogfood the product extensively - you genuinely care about real user value and quality.

Requirements

• Required:
• 2-7 years of software engineering experience (not a new grad - some professional engineering experience is required).
• Computer Science degree from a top-tier university.
• Strong CS fundamentals.
• High energy, exceptionally bright, and driven to build fast.
• Proven entrepreneurial spirit - startup exposure or experience in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Track record of technically complex side projects or independent builds.
• Comfortable with - and excited by - early-stage chaos and the demands of a founding team environment.
• Experience with real-time media, vision or video models, audio synthesis, or voice systems.
• Experience with memory and retrieval systems or agentic AI architectures.
• Proficiency in Python, including typed scientific Python.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted or agentic development tooling.
• Compensation & Benefits
• Salary: $175,000 - $225,000 per year
• Equity as a founding team member
• Visa sponsorship available
• Location
• This role is fully on-site in San Francisco, CA . Candidates must be willing and able to work in-person full-time. Remote work is not available for this position.

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Company Intel

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